His leg got caught on the brake lever, plunging almost the full length of the lever into the inside of his thigh. It just missed arteries which could have caused him to lose the leg.

Liam said: “I was going through a gap in a bush when I hit a wooden pole. It knocked me off the bike and threw me over the handlebars.”

The next thing he knew he was lying on the ground with the brake lever jammed in his leg. Liam said on a scale of one to 10 he rated the pain at a nine.

He added: “My friend Jake rang the ambulance and some people who were walking their dogs came to help as well.”

Paramedics had to call out a fire crew from Wokingham Road fire station who cut through the handlebars so he could be taken to Royal Berkshire Hospital where he was operated on before being released on Wednesday.

But even while he was lying in the park in agony, brave Liam and his mates Callum Nathan, Harry Eddington and Jake Bayliss, who along with Liam attend The Forest School in Winnersh, couldn’t resist taking photographs of the injury with their mobile phones.

They stayed with him until paramedics arrived.

Liam, who admitted he was showing off by riding without his hands on the handlebars, said: “They were just in shock. They went away when the ambulance came because they didn’t want to see it.”

Liam won praise from his dad Mark Padbury, 45, for staying relaxed throughout.

Liam said: “I just thought I would stay calm rather than worrying everyone else that was around.”

Mr Padbury had rushed to the park when he heard but found Liam calm and smiling.

He said: “When I was told he had had an accident I didn’t take too much of it in. I didn’t think it was as severe as it was when I got there. It was strange to see half the handlebar hanging out of his thigh.”

Mr Padbury praised the emergency services and Liam’s mates for staying calm. Jake in particular, he said, realised he should not try to remove the lever from Liam’s leg.

He added: “The doctor said an inch either way and he would probably have lost the leg. But he will have a nice scar to impress the girls.”